It's one day before Arizona State University's first official practice of the 2002-03 season. The basketball staff meets at Rob and Carolyn Evans' beautiful Ahwatukee home at 8 a.m. to discuss the upcoming season. The gathering includes the three assistant coaches Russ Pennell, Tony Benford and Dan O'Dowd. Derrick Wrobel...
It's never a good sign when somewhere in the vicinity of half of my most memorable moviegoing experiences in a given year come from reissues of films at least three decades old. But there it is: In my memory banks, 2002 may well be remembered as the year of the...
With Frida -- the story of profoundly passionate and uncompromising Mexican-Jewish painter Frida Kahlo -- it's evident that a few folks in marketing know how to work the demographics (it'll be extremely PC, possibly mandatory, to gush in adoration of it), but that's the first and last cynical comment of...
As you enter the backdoor entrance of Durant's restaurant in Phoenix, you cannot help but notice the hardworking cooks trying to hide their sweat and fatigue while giving you a friendly smile and muffled hello in broken English. The Valley's kitchens are full of these men and women in white...
I might as well just come out and say it: Spirited Away is the best movie I've seen all year. Though it would be a masterpiece in any language, Hayao Miyazaki's animated spectacular (and Japan's highest-grossing film ever) is being released by Disney simultaneously in two versions -- one in...
Thespians, take note: Barbara Harris has moved to town, and she's hung up her teaching shingle. Local acting students could do worse; Harris' brief but notable Broadway career snagged her a Tony Award for The Apple Tree in 1967, and she was nominated for her role in On a Clear...
Although his name sounds like an inventory notebook for candy bars, Heath Ledger is presently overcoming this confusion -- as well as the plight of the pretty boy -- to become one of contemporary cinema's more vital actors. In The Four Feathers -- as in The Patriot, A Knight's Tale...
In The Banger Sisters, Goldie Hawn plays Suzette, an aging groupie too stuck in a gloriously seedy past to move into the future. It's 2002, yet she acts as though it's 1969 and nothing's changed -- not the Sunset Strip's Whisky A Go-Go, where she still tends bar behind sunglasses...
I hesitate to expect too much from any theater season, but the upcoming calendar of plays and musicals certainly looks more interesting than the last several have. This season, old Will is hotter than ever, and there are more musical tributes than you can shake a baton at. If there...
When Robin Williams was America's favorite funnyman in films like Mrs. Doubtfire, it always felt a little strange admitting that the guy seemed kinda creepy. When he "got serious" in irritating tear-jerkers like Hook and What Dreams May Come, it was certainly in vogue to proclaim him annoying, but few...
The man who is perhaps the most unlikely pop star of our time is returning to Phoenix. Morrissey — son of librarians, celibate singer of sexual songs, violent vegetarian, bundle of endless contradiction and controversy — graces Celebrity Theatre with his presence on Friday, August 9. The question is: Why?...
It's September 11, 2002, but Richard J. Botto isn't at home watching the relentless CNN coverage of last year's terrorist attacks. Instead, the native New Yorker has agreed to meet me for drinks at Sapporo to talk about Razor, the national men's magazine he launched two years ago. Botto is...
The plot of The Importance of Being Earnest, for those unfortunates who've missed it these past 109 years, goes something like this: A dandified London wastrel by the name of Algernon (Algy) Moncrieff (portrayed in this adaptation by Rupert Everett) welcomes into his chambers his friend and ally, Ernest (Colin...
LYT: Don't you find it interesting that Blue Crush director John Stockwell is on this whole girl-power kick, going off on the "sexist" guys who'd rather "appreciate a cute girl in a bikini, but ain't gonna give up a wave for them," yet the movie's marketing is all about appreciating...
It's daunting to hear that John Sayles' new film Sunshine State is almost two and a half hours long and consists mostly of calm conversations. But don't be deterred, or you'll miss out on a study of character, class and changing times that puts Robert Altman's stodgy Gosford Park to...
Anyone who wants proof of the sorry state of mainstream country music need only look at the struggling career of 30-year-old Allison Moorer, who by all rights should be a major star by now. The Alabama-born singer and songwriter made a big splash in 1998, when her heartfelt ballad "A...
David James is a black man. Ginger Mattox is a white woman. In the fall of 1998, Phoenix police officers pulled over Ginger Mattox as she drove near her home in the historic Story District near 16th Avenue and McDowell. The officer pulled over the professionally dressed woman, checked her...
Like a Jawbreaker that changes color every few seconds that you suck it, MIIB: Men in Black II delivers a quick buzz, lots of stuff to look at, and a totally non-nutritious joy that can only be attained with the aid of artificial flavorings and Yellow #5. In a nutshell,...
Her name sounds like the answers to a multiple-choice question on a catechism quiz, but the Reverend Doctor Lady Bishop swears she's all of the above. She is America's premier voodoo priestess, a messenger of a mélange of disciplines including black magic and Mormonism who's here, she explains, to "work...
Ten years after The Scandal -- and its negative effect on the size of his audiences, power and independence -- Woody Allen broke his longtime avoidance of the Oscar telecast with his pro-New York standup shtick at this year's ceremony. The positive audience response suggested that all is forgiven ...
Twenty miles north of Kearny, Arizona, a pistachio tree grows. Strangers turn up from time to time to trim its branches, or to snip away the weeds growing near its trunk. Some leave notes or handwritten poems that, like the tree, are dedicated to the memory of Ladmo, the late,...
